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Cologne Attacks: Weak Catholic Response

By now you have already heard about the coordinated sexual assaults that Muslim “rapefugees” conducted in Cologne Germany on New Year’s Eve. But a few people have pointed out that the rapes took place in the shadow of Cologne Cathedral, which was at one time a major pilgrimage site in Christendom. This wasn’t just an assault on German women, but also a slap in a face of Christianity. Yet while secular parties like PEGIDA have marched to protest the attack, Catholics have been silent. Why has there been such a weak Catholic response?

The Attacks

While Cologne is getting most of the press, sex attacks by migrants are happening all over Europe as this graphic from the Daily Mail shows.

Credit: Daily Mail

The sexual assaults have not stopped. Islamic migrants continue to grope and rape European girls. Only yesterday, there was another attack in a Munich nightclub. There are now over 150 reports of sex attacks in Germany alone.

These attacks are not spontaneous attacks by lone individuals. They are planned and coordinated. In Cologne, there reports of 30 men attacking groups of girls. The attackers used social media to coordinate the assaults.

The Weak Catholic Response

The Catholic Church has been largely silent in response to the rapes that are occurring all over Europe. To my knowledge, Pope Francis has not issued a statement. I’ve also been unable to find any response from the Archbishop of Cologne. The only official response comes from Father Gerd Bachner, the provost of the cathedral, who issued this flaccid statement:

The news of the violence on New Year’s Eve in front of the Cologne Central Station, in the immediate vicinity of the cathedral, has shocked me. We must now act prudently and it is especially important to carefully investigate the incidents and not jump to conclusions. On this basis, I am confident that the city, together with the police, will take appropriate measures to ensure that such a thing does not happen again.

Fr. Bachner’s faith in the police is misplaced. There is evidence that police all over Germany have conspired to minimize the rapes and to cover up the fact that they were committed by Islamic migrants. Cologne’s police chief was fired for the cover up, but it was only after a protest by a naked feminist.

Catholic bloggers are little better. I checked the Patheos Catholic channel to see if there were any articles that discussed the rapes in Europe. I could not find one.

The one shining exception to this was the blog OnePeterFive which published an excellent article called the Rape of Europe.

Why is the Catholic Response so Weak?

I believe that Catholic leaders are silent because it goes against the message that the Church has been pushing. The Holy Father has made the refugee crisis a key issue of his pontificate.

In September, Francis asked every Catholic institution in Europe to host a migrant family: “May every parish, every religious community, every monastery, every sanctuary in Europe host a family.”

However, Francis is not naive. He is aware that ISIS is exploiting Europe’s open door policy. In an interview in September 2015, he said: “It’s true, I recognise that, nowadays, border safety conditions are not what they once were. The truth is that just 400 kilometres from Sicily there is an incredibly cruel terrorist group. So there is a danger of infiltration, this is true.”

Despite this, Francis said that Europe does not have the option to close itself off from refugees: “if a refugee arrives, despite all the safety precautions, we must welcome him, because this is a commandment from the Bible.”

The Catholic Church has been quick to crack down on clerics who question the wisdom of allowing hundreds of thousands of poorly educated Muslim men into Europe. Back in January, the diocese of Münster banned a priest who had spoken at a PEGIDA rally saying: “Europe has been at war with Islam for 1,400 years. It is unbelievable that Chancellor Angela Merkel said ‘Islam belongs to Germany.'”

A spokesman for the diocese, said: “With his statements he stirs up hostility against Islam; we consider this dangerous.”

Interestingly, the Catholic Church’s position with regard to the “refugees” aligns perfectly with that of billionaire George Soros. In an opinion piece, Soros states the EU must accept “at least” one million Muslims annually, and it must provide each “asylum seeker” $16,800 per year to cover housing, health care, and education costs.

This is the same George Soros who is known for his rabidly pro-abortion stance, who funds MoveOn.org, Black Lives Matter, and even left-wing Catholic groups that seek to undermine Church teaching.

Historical Catholic Response to Islamic Aggression

It wasn’t always this way. After having received reports of Islamic aggression against Christians in the Holy Land, Pope Urban II was moved to call a crusade to liberate that land from Muslim domination. One of the things that moved him was the fact that Muslims were raping Christian women (the more things change, the more things stay the same). In his speech in 1095 in Clermont, Urban said, ” What shall I say of the abominable rape of the women? To speak of it is worse than to be silent.”

It is not necessary to recount here all the subsequent battles where the Catholic peoples of Europe fought bravely against Muslim incursions—preferring to die rather than have their women defiled by the Saracen.

Which Approach is Correct?

So we have two very different Catholic approaches to Muslims in Europe. There is the irenic approach of the current Church, which invites as many Muslims as would like to come . On the other hand, we have the belligerent approach of our ancestors. Which one is correct?

Defenders of the modern approach will say that our ancestors were wrong; that we are now being more faithful to the gospel than they were. Perhaps they are right, but I believe that if you look over and find that the anti-Catholic George Soros is your fellow traveler, you might want to re-evaluate your positions.

What Should Catholics Do?

The Catholic Church recognizes a right to self defense but it also teaches that Catholics have a grave duty to protect others from unjust aggressors. The Catechism 2265 teaches: “Legitimate defense can be not only a right but a grave duty for one who is responsible for the lives of others. The defense of the common good requires that an unjust aggressor be rendered unable to cause harm.”

What happens when the police are unable or unwilling to protect the native women of your country from being raped? When a Catholic comes upon a woman being attacked by 15 men, is his only duty to call the police and be on his merry way?

Right wing groups all over Europe have taken to patrolling the streets to defend Europeans, particularly women, from the predations of the “refugees.” One group in Finland calls itself the Soldiers of Odin. I don’t know whether the group is simply rightwing or whether they are actually Odinists, but I would guess that the European women who live in high density “refugee” areas are probably thankful to have strong European men protecting them.

I can’t help but wonder whether paganism will return to Europe thanks to the work of groups like the Soldiers of Odin. After all, which group are you more likely to give your allegiance to? The group that is protecting you from rape gangs, or the group that is working hard to import more of them?

Catholics are always talking about a “new evangelization.” What better way to evangelize people than to demonstrate it by forming bands of Catholic men who will defend their own neighborhoods.

Reader Interactions

Comments

Self-defense is indeed not just a right but a duty for all Christians. The only question that remains is do we count just the invaders as the threat, or the fifth column that invited them through the city gates? At any rate, I’m hoping there are young Catholic men turning their garages into gyms with a barbell on the floor and the Blessed Virgin Mary on the wall, hiking and camping and shooting at weekends and getting really ready because we’re going to need them soon.

I’m glad I’m not the only one who sees this is not just as attack on women but on Christendom itself. The sanctity of Cologne seems to be lost on most of the media, and even the Archbishop himself. Incidentally I seem to remember the Archbishop of Cologne switched the lights off in the Cathedral in response to the PEGIDA march there, and PEGIDA are pretty tame, ecumenical Germans that include rainbow flags within their ranks – hardly the Nazis everybody thinks they are.

Thanks also for the link to One Peter Five – a fantastic site I’d not heard of before.

Simon, I agree whole heartedly that we need to focus not just on the invaders but on the fifth column in our countries that have invited them.

I don’t know what to say about the Catholic bishops. They themselves will not stick up for Christianity. As you are well aware, some church leaders even allow these invaders to desecrate their churches. Other churches go so far as to remove Christian symbols so as to not offend our would-be overlords.

This is a bad situation. The Christian church should be the one institution that traditional men can rely on. It is sort of like arriving at Helm’s Deep only to find that the men charged with preserving it had invited a bunch of orcs into the stronghold.

Despite this, I am extremely optimistic. I am certain that we are going to change things. I know you share my certainty.

Good piece Michael. I have to admit that I have to split the Catholic Church into two: Holy Mother Church in which the Truths given by Christ and the Apostles are preserved and the Institutional Church made up of the hierarchy. I’m at the the point where I see the Institutional Church as being taken over by Modernists and homosexuals and as such don’t have a lot of faith and trust in them. The fact that bishops can float some of the ideas that they did at the recent Synod on the Family shows that things are very seriously wrong in the Institutional Church.

I just keep reminding myself that God allows it to bring about a greater good.